HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. -- Reggie White, a fearsome defensive end for the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers who was one of the great players in NFL history, died Sunday, his wife said. He was 43.

A cause of death was not immediately known.

Today our beloved husband, father and friend passed away," White's wife, Sara, said in a statement through a family pastor. "His family appreciates your thoughts and prayers as we mourn the loss of Reggie White. We want to thank you in advance for honoring our privacy."

A two-time NFL defensive player of the year and ordained minister who was known as the "Minister of Defense," White played a total of 15 years with Philadelphia, Green Bay and Carolina. He retired in 2000 as the NFL's all-time leader in sacks with 198. The mark has since been passed by Bruce Smith.

Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie called White "one of the greatest men ever to play the game of football."

"His legacy on and off the football field will never be forgotten," Lurie said in a statement.

A member of the NFL's 75th anniversary team, White was elected to the Pro Bowl a record 13 straight times from 1986-98. He was the NFL's defensive player of the year in 1987 and 1998.

"As great a player as Reggie was, he was a better person, and it isn't close," Detroit Lions CEO Matt Millen said. "Every life that Reggie touched is better for it. This is a very depressing day."

After an All-American senior season at Tennessee, White began his pro career with the Memphis Showboats of the USFL in 1984, and joined the Philadelphia Eagles, who held his NFL rights, after the USFL folded in 1985.

After eight years as an integral piece in Philadelphia's "Gang Green Defense," White signed as a free agent with Green Bay in 1993 for $17 million over four years, huge for that era. His signing, along with a trade for quarterback Brett Favre, brought a measure of respectability back to the franchise and he was the first major black player to sign with the Packers as a free agent.

His decision to choose the Packers was a surprise. While visiting various teams, he suggested he would prefer a major city, where he could minister to black youth.

"That's what changed the football fortunes of this franchise. It was huge," Packers president Bob Harlan said Sunday. "Everyone thought the last place he would sign was Green Bay and it was monumental because not only did he sign but he recruited for Green Bay and got guys like Sean Jones to come here. He sent a message to the rest of the NFL that Green Bay was a great place to play and before that this was a place people didn't want to come."

He helped lead the Packers to consecutive Super Bowl appearances, including a win over New England in 1997, when he set a Super Bowl record with three sacks

he was amazing as a player, teammate, a man, a mentor, a minister and a advocate for change and hope. God bless him and his family. an unbearable loss for many in the NFL and in the communities he did so much for.

he was amazing as a player, teammate, a man, a mentor, a minister and a advocate for change and hope. God bless him and his family. an unbearable loss for many in the NFL and in the communities he did so much for.

Click to expand...

Another tough blow for this area. Reggie White graduated from Howard High School in Chattanooga, TN. He was a good man, who stood by his values through thick and thin.

He remains as the only athlete, in my opinion, who's legacy off the field was much stronger than his legacy on the field.

By Mike Celizic
NBCSports.com contributor
Updated: 11:26 p.m. ET Dec. 26, 2004A lot of people, maybe most of us, stop living long before we die. Reggie White wasn&#8217;t one of them.

He was arguably the greatest defensive end the NFL has ever seen, certainly the best between Deacon Jones and today. But what truly distinguished him was that the end of football marked the beginning of an intellectual quest that was as courageous and intense as any battle he ever had on a football field.

White was always a good man, but, like so many of us, his charity and good works came not from any conscious contemplation of his beliefs, but from a blind adherence to things he had learned before he was old enough to know what he was being taught.

What sets Reggie White the person apart is that he came to understand that truth must be discovered for one&#8217;s self, not accepted in a pretty package, no matter how prettily wrapped that package is. At the end of his too brief life, he was probably living more than he ever had, even when he was the most feared force in football.

This isn&#8217;t a criticism of anyone, just a statement. And when I say we stop living, I don&#8217;t mean that we stop going places and doing things and being happy and sad and everything in between. But we do stop growing, stop learning, stop inquiring, stop thinking, stop seeking, stop dreaming.

It&#8217;s not necessarily bad, if your goal in life is to be happy. There&#8217;s probably nothing quite as satisfying as knowing you have a complete handle on life. Dogs know everything there is to know about being a dog and they&#8217;re the happiest critters on earth. And people who go overboard asking &#8220;What does it all mean?&#8221; can become tortured souls.

The problem arises when what you believe to be right involves inflicting your own beliefs of physical harm on others.

The Middle East is full of true believers who manifest their certainty about their own beliefs by killing or wishing dead everyone who doesn&#8217;t agree with them. America has more than its share of people who would force everyone to believe the same as they if it weren&#8217;t for that pesky Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Ignorance, indeed, can be bliss.

I once thought Reggie White was one of those people who assumed he knew it all. It didn&#8217;t make him evil; he was always pious and charitable. It just made him common.

A Christian minister since he was 17, he was the Minister of Defense with the Eagles through the 1980s and then the heart and soul of the Packers beginning in 1993 and including their Super Bowl win in 1996. Those who played with him remember him as the most influential, the most inspiring, and the best teammate and person they ever hoped to know.

But the joy I got from watching him play was tempered by his pronouncements off the field. The idea that Jesus wanted him to squash the quarterback I always found to be annoying. His declaration that God wanted him to sign with the Packers I found to be absurdly self-serving, a convenient end run around the truth that his decision was helped by the enormous contract Green Bay dangled in front of him.

In 1997, he was invited to speak to the Wisconsin legislature, and he used the pulpit to decry homosexuals. He was parroting what he&#8217;d been taught, and it wasn&#8217;t pretty. That was when I wrote him off as someone whose opinions were worth listening to.

He retired in 2000 and pretty much fell off the radar screen. White stopped preaching in churches around the country. I paid no attention to it, nor did I wonder what he was doing. Whatever it was, he had decided to make it a private quest.

When he died of a heart attack the morning after Christmas at the age of 43, I learned what he had been up to, and it was as noble as any enterprise anyone has ever taken up: He was pursuing truth.

Back in 1996, when White thought he already knew everything there was to know about life, the Inner City Church in Knoxville, Tenn., burned down. Jerry Upton, a friend of White&#8217;s, was a top officer in the church and White helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to rebuild the church and help the congregation.

Three years later, Upton pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. The money White helped raise was gone. It was more than a rude awakening.

White began to question the whole structure of organized religion. He felt that the money he raised could have gone directly to help people who needed it rather than to paying munificent salaries to church leaders and building ostentatious buildings.

He also came to realize that the crowds who came whenever he preached were there not to learn about religion but to see him. So he quit.

But he didn&#8217;t stop believing. At core, White was still a Christian, which to him meant believing in Christ but not the institutions that had grown up in his wake. He also realized he had been taking the word of others about who Christ was and what he represented.

So Reggie White, former football player, went to Israel and began studying Hebrew. This wasn&#8217;t a whim and it wasn&#8217;t a fad like Madonna and her acolytes diving into the waters of the Kabbala. It was a man with questions determined to go to the source to get answers.

If he could read the scriptures in Hebrew, he felt, he could decide for himself what they meant.

Had he lived, he would have found that he needed to learn Greek, the language of much of the New Testament, as well. I have no doubt he would have learned that, too, if that was what it would take to complete his quest.

He learned a lot in the time he had. White has in the past couple of years said he greatly regrets the statements he made about homosexuals and about god directing him to sign with the Packers. He knows he made them out of ignorance only because he dared to challenge his own beliefs.

The search for truth is far more difficult than playing football. It&#8217;s so much easier to take what you are handed and take it to the grave. But if you do that, you also face an end to thought and growth long before the end of physical life.

Reggie White was a great football player and a good man. But it was in his final quest, the one he was pursuing at his death, that he became great. We&#8217;ll miss him for what he was. We&#8217;ll miss him more for what he still might have been.

Mike Celizic writes regularly for NBCSports.com and is a freelance writer based in New York.

yea, i wish ricky the best, but man, reggie was a guy who knew about looking for truth, while keeping his word and owning up to his responsibilities at the same time.

Click to expand...

Reggie did the same when he was a player too. In the locker room he commanded respect. He didnt demand it or ask for it. Guys gave it to him because of the respect he showed everyone else. He offered the word of god not shoved it down their throats. They either chose to listen or politely refuse. Either way Reggie would be a guiding light to many young players in the NFL. Thats why he was the Ministry of Defense.

White&#8217;s program helped start 400 businesses
Late NFL legend and wife started Urban Hope in '97
The Associated Press
Updated: 11:32 a.m. ET Dec. 27, 2004GREEN BAY, Wis. - In the seven years since Reggie White and his wife helped found Urban Hope, the program has assisted in starting 400 businesses.

&#8220;A lot of people know Reggie as a football player and a legend, but what he has returned to the community and the seeds that he&#8217;s planted here was one of the best models in America for economic development,&#8221; said Mark Burwell, Urban Hope&#8217;s executive director.

White, a former defensive end and one of the NFL&#8217;s greatest players, died Sunday in North Carolina at 43. Burwell said he spoke with White on the phone for about an hour three days ago, and Urban Hope was looking forward to having him as a keynote speaker in about a month.

Urban Hope has produced more than 800 graduates and led to the creation of 1,100 jobs, Burwell said. In recent years, White and his wife, Sara, distanced themselves from the program&#8217;s day-to-day operations.

White arrived in Green Bay in 1993 and helped lead the Packers to two Super Bowl appearances. Former Green Bay Mayor Paul Jadin, who left office in 2003 and became Green Bay Area Chamber of Commerce president, developed a close relationship with White through Urban Hope.

&#8220;Reggie was one of those people who I think recognized that he needed to justify his blessings in life by becoming a vehicle to bring blessings to others,&#8221; Jadin said.

Angela Cervantes graduated from Urban Hope in 1998 and has since started Angelina Restaurant in Green Bay. She recalled some advice from White.

&#8220;He was always preaching the important thing when you open a business is to be honest with customers and yourself, otherwise you&#8217;re not going to make it.&#8221;

Useful Searches

About USMessageBoard.com

USMessageBoard.com was founded in 2003 with the intent of allowing all voices to be heard. With a wildly diverse community from all sides of the political spectrum, USMessageBoard.com continues to build on that tradition. We welcome everyone despite political and/or religious beliefs, and we continue to encourage the right to free speech.

Come on in and join the discussion. Thank you for stopping by USMessageBoard.com!